Saturday, 5 February 2011

A day trip to Norfolk

We headed up to north Norfolk with Rob stokes and our first stop of the day was Holkham freshmarsh For Rough legged buzzard.

Rough legged buzzrd

on the way to Holkham fresh marsh we had hundreds of Pink footed goose flying round looking for somewhere to feed, when we arrived at Holkham fresh marsh we saw some more Pink footed geese and a Ringtail Hen harrier patrolling the field really close to us, giving amazing views, Dad then saw a Roughleggedbuzzard flying low over the Fresh marsh and then land in front of a gate on the ground and sat there for about 5-10 minutes were we id it as a juv bird, we then drove further up the road and found the Rough leggedbuzzard being mobbed by a Peregrine falcon it then sat in a tree for about 15-20 minutes before flying off, we then decided to move on to Ticthwell RSPB

We arrived at ticthwell RSPB at 9:15 and saw Siskin, Robins, Blue tits, Goldfinches and Chaffinches on the feeders, we then headed out on to the reserve from the parrinder hide we saw good views of skylark and Meadow pipits after about 10 minutes of searching a flock of about 30 Twite flew in and showed very well feeding and preening whilst preening i saw there nice purple rump which was amazing to see.

We then headed to beach and saw 12 Snow bunting mostly females i think i picked out 2 males, whilst scanning the see for long tail ducks and red necked grebes we saw a big flock of common Scoter we then headed to the cafe for lunch and then from there we went to look for a Ross goose.

We then arrived at the site for the Ross goose and there was no sign of it accept from Pink footed goose after about 10-20 minutes of scanning 7 Bewick swans flew over, we then drove down the road to see if we can see the Bewick swans, we saw the seven swans heads before coming out in the open, whilst scanning threw hundreds of Pink footed geese there was still no sign of the bird until the whole flock went up, and then i saw the Ross goose at the start of the flock and then dad saw it as they flew back to land, the only person that didn’t see the goose was rob who we are really upset for, so after and amazing day birding we decided to head home.